Daniel Burke writes of Mehdi Ostadhassan, an Iranian native who moved to North Dakota in 2009 to study petroleum engineering and, after getting a job as a professor at the University of North Dakota and marrying a fellow co-worker, applied for a green card in 2014. Though they were expecting it to be a quick process, five years later, Ostadhassan is still awaiting approval. 

This story was exactly that: a story. It was long and filled with a lot detail that would not be necessary in a news story. It reached into the past quite a bit and held off on telling why Ostadhassan wasn’t being approved for a green card. It also introduced a lot of characters (the mysterious man with the badge, etc.). You could even tell it was going to be more of a story for entertainment rather than strictly for information. The reason they were telling the story was most likely for the green-card, immigrant aspect, which has been a big topic of discussion, especially in politics, since President Trump was elected and sparked the idea of a border wall. I thought the story had good pictures and quotes, and the topic was for sure interesting, I just noticed it was more like a novel than a news article. 

KMEG 14 Siouxland News reports on the grant Hornick, Iowa, received to build a berm between the river and the town after the Little Sioux River flood back in March. The mayor of the town is excited for this new investment, knowing that once it is all set up, he won’t have to worry about the four inches of rain devastating their town once again. 

This very short article spoke of an event that happened almost half a year ago, but the grant finally being approved and ready to be put into action makes it relevant for the community. But, the thing that really stuck out to me was the one quote they decided to use from the mayor of the town. It was an awkward quote, referring to himself in third person and then repeating how he “won’t have to worry in the middle of the night” in the same sentence a couple times. Going back to our quote discussion in class, I think it would have been okay if the writer cleaned up the quote to make it flow a bit better. With the mayor, who is a big political figure in the town, making sure you keep the meaning of what he is trying to say is important but cutting out a line or two would have helped him sound more competent on the issue than how they made him sound in the article.

Neel Shah writes that the procedure of cesarean surgeries has come to a rise in America. The reasons Shah emphasizes for this rise is that the surgeries are more affordable, needing less staff and being more time efficient. Some hospitals are not allowing for their patients to make their own decisions, prepping them for C-sections even if it’s not an emergency. When going into a C-section, the benefits must outweigh the inherent risks. The rise in these surgeries has made it so the chance of a woman dying during childbirth is 50% more likely to occur.

I felt like this article was more of an opinion piece than an informative news story. It included the fact that the writer was an obstetrician and the decisions they felt like they were supposed to be careful about when considering a patient’s labor. It also gave advice to the reader. No outside sources were used, other than the side gallery of one woman and her experience of not having an option of how she would deliver her child. Though having one source is better than none, it still would have been beneficial for the writer to include a few more opinions and expert opinions to support what they were saying or offer another view point.

In this very short article NPR reporters Paolo Zialcita and Lauren Frayer write about India’s new ban on electronic cigarettes. Although some places in India did ban the “gateway” tobacco product, the ban was prompted by “the Indian Council of Medical Research publishing a paper recommending a complete ban”. The biggest goal the Indian government is trying to accomplish through this ban is the prevention of young people becoming addicted to nicotine. Zialcita and Frayer go on to list a few penalties people may face if they are found to be guilty of having an e-cigarette in their possession.

To begin with, this article had no apparent lead. It had a title and then it started its first paragraph. I could see the writers could have tried to make the lead two sentences, but I think the first line could have been by itself and called an effective lead. Secondly, the use of introducing experts and using quotes from them seemed very sporadic. The last paragraph is actually a former minister’s opinion and actions. On a more observant note, the story falls under the category of Conflict. It takes place in India but is reported on the U.S. NPR website. This is because the United States is taking steps toward banning e-cigarettes, so reporting on other countries doing it and their reason for it allows us, as readers, to see the impact of our actions in a global perspective. 

Reporter and editor at NBC News MACH, Denise Chow, reports on the effects that climate change is having on Greenland. Chow begins the article with a specific thunderstorm that scared the people of Greenland, for they never have such storms. She then incorporates Greenland civilians’ stories of what it was like when they were kids versus now, what businesses are beginning to look like with the environmental change, and even what Greenland may look like in the future. 

Chow unpacked a lot of information within her news story. I noticed that she started and ended the story with the same Greenland woman’s quote, first quoting about “when [she] grew up…” and then ending with how she wishes people would be aware of “how much it means for [them] to keep [their] culture”. This added a lot of credibility and unbiased content from the author, showing how scary it is that the snow is melting. She also incorporated the hardships that the climate change is having on small businesses that depend on the ice, giving readers another reason to care about the issue at hand. I think that with as many details that the story included, the lead seemed very vague and general, so readers had to actually read if they wanted to know what the article was about. 

According to Journalist Daniel Oberhaus, a team of astronomers from University College London announced Wednesday that they detected water vapor in a “super-Earth” planet outside of our solar system. According to their findings via the Hubble Space Telescope, this planet is the only planet outside of our solar system that has the correct temperature to support water has an atmosphere with vapor in it. The astronomers do not believe life, or even liquid, could be found on the planet but it does have one of the criteria required for a habitable exoplanet. 

This article was extremely long and repetitive of what the proper title of this planet should be. It was too lengthy in the format of each paragraph, making it hard to stay focused since there was so much text on the screen. I did not like that the author’s name was not up by the title but instead placed at the bottom of the story, along with a short bibliography of him. I also found the headline misleading. Before reading the article, I thought maybe they found a planet with life on it, which would be major news, but as I began reading I soon realized that the planet just had a characteristic needed for a habitable planet. It did have an interesting topic that included a rare finding, though, so the story itself was definitely worth writing about.

 Journalist Ryan Prior reports that on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, a high school swimmer was disqualified because of her swimsuit. She swam and won a heart during the meet, but an anonymous race official said her swimsuit shifted and showed too much of her rear. Since no one had made the disqualification before she swam in the meet, the “heavy-handed and unnecessary” disqualification was tossed out. The high schooler’s mother called it sexual harassment because the school-issued swimsuit only shifted because of the girl’s body type. The director of sports for the National Federation of State High School Associations brought out a diagram of “Appropriate and Inappropriate Female Suit Coverage” that the mother called outdated, representing a 1950’s swimsuit style and model.

The most interesting part of this article was the fact that it was chunked with titles, like you see in textbooks. Every time it introduced a new idea, like the mother believing it to be sexual harassment or the diagram being brought into the argument, it would have a centered title that introduced the idea. This made it easier to transition and understand the shift. Prior wrote a story about a girl in Alaska but because it involved a conflict that might be relatable for people all the nation, it was newsworthy. High schools deal with dress code problems everywhere, so I think that reporting on an event that not only tells a story but also offers the solution to that specific situation. 

Reporter Madeline Farber describes how a 12-year-old boy from the United Kingdom was jumping on his family’s trampoline one day when a metal coil from broke off and shot into his back. Jamie Quinan was quickly rushed to the hospital, finding out there that the coil was only centimeters away from his spine. With Jamie’s bravery, his parents are using this freak accident to advocate for trampoline safety everywhere. Farber points out that there were 94,000 ER injuries that were due to trampoline accidents in 2012. The American Academy of Pediatrics warns parents that children under six are most at risk for a trampoline injury. Jamie told Farber that he can still feel the coil in his spine, but he’s getting better and is relieved that it wasn’t worse.

To begin with, I noticed that the story covered a very bizarre topic. The article points out how common trampoline injuries are, but I have never personally heard of a metal coil popping off and impaling someone. Another thing I noticed FOXdo with this article was they used a lot of visuals, even though this story was very short and simple. It lacked background information but made that up with graphic images and pictures of the boy holding up the spring in a heroic manner. 

Journalist Nancy Gaarder explains that one of the five wells in Nebraska, Plattsmouth’s water plant, is once again operating at full speed. It supplies 7,000 people in the area with drinking water and since the historic flooding that occurred last March, people were having to watch their water usage and conserve as much as humanly possible. The city had people working 24/7 on getting the power plant up and running again and after three months, the city can pump 100,000 gallons more than it did before the flood. The city hopes to get two more wells up and working again, all while trying to find a long-term solution to the fixture of the water plants. 

Gaarder’s article is set up in a way that requires readers to understand the context of the flooding that occurred last spring. Though she does give the date and hints at the massive destruction it left, it does not go into any extra detail that would help readers understand the excitement and relief the article is trying to portray. The two things that really make this story newsworthy are the proximity and impact it has towards its readers. People who live in the Omaha Metro were greatly affected by the flood, so hearing of any accomplishments to recover from it allows hope to be redeemed. Nationally, it may not be the biggest story right now though, since it does only matter to the people in the area. The point of the story also impacts many people, around 7,000 people to be exact. The water plant reopening makes it so people who get water from the Plattsmouth Water Plant no longer have to closely watch how much water they use because it is back to functioning at a regular pace. It’s something that people would need to hear about in order to know whether or not they need to continue extreme conservation or not. 

Journalist Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs writes about the category 4 hurricane, Hurricane Dorian, that is supposed to hit Florida as soon as Saturday evening. Because of the unexpected course of the hurricane thus far, Gov. Ron DeSantis and officials have been warning Floridians all along the East Coast to be prepared for the “catastrophic damage” it could cause. 

Bogel-Burroughs then goes on to talk about Hurricane Dorian’s impact on Puerto Rico it caused on Wednesday. Far less intense than Hurricane Maria, residents still rushed to stock up on supplies and to calm their nerves through the mental health hotline due to the difficult memories they have from two years ago. Last year, federal and local emergency managers announced a technologically advanced emergency alert siren downstream of the Guajataca Dam. Unfortunately, they have not yet granted themselves the permits required to install the alerts so they could not use it to warn residents about Hurricane Dorian. 

The hurricane also unexpectedly hit the Virgin Islands, but luckily it spared them horrific devastation. A lot of people haven’t yet recovered fully from the drastic damage Hurricane Irma caused so once they learned that the hurricane was headed their way, anxiety increased and they had no confidence in what they did restore. 

Reading this article instilled great empathy within me for Florida residents. I feel like the East Coast was just now getting back on their feet from the last hurricane that left them in devastation and now they have to scramble to get supplies and face yet another hurricane. Even though Bogel-Burroughs mentions that it will be far less intense than Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane is named for a reason; because it’s memorable. Being in the Midwest, we only understand coastal storms through television and the internet. Unless we, of course, go to the coast to experience one.

This summer, my parents and I took a road trip down south to New Orleans. At one point, we were tired of the tourist town and wanted to see some outskirts of Louisiana. We ended up driving to a little town next to the ocean that looked abandoned, yet still lived. It was hard to see but it gave me a new perspective on how lucky I am that I’ve never had to endure such a tragedy. 

My hope for Hurricane Dorian is that people gain a sense of urgency, understanding that climate change has affected how sporadic hurricanes can come. Puerto Rico hopefully realizes how helpful that warning siren could’ve been if only allowed themselves the permits to set it up. People should be preparing for the worst, if they are choosing not to evacuate.